KTSF-TV, the multi-cultural Brisbane station with a primetime Chinese entertainment and news bloc — is going full-tilt on coverage of the Chinese earthquake. Over at Channel 26 they realize there is a thirst for any information from the devastated region from those in the Bay Area’s vast Chinese community.

The numbers show that: Viewership for KTSF’s Cantonese newscast increased 44 percent Monday night compared to the average number of viewers at this time last year. The station reports that 39,000 people watched Monday night’s ‘cast, about 12,000 viewers over the average over the past year.

On Tuesday, editors planned to dedicate two-thirds of the station’s hour-long Mandarin and Cantonese nightly newscasts to quake coverage. (The station has about 650,000 unique viewers a month for its programming in 12 mostly Asian languages; its nightly Chinese-language news broadcasts score about 91,000 viewers a night, combined.)

But KTSF assignment editor Angelina Wong tells us that the station’s viewers have contacted them over the past two days with a simple request: How can we send money and aid to earthquake victims. So it will tell viewers how to connect with relief efforts. You can also check out its webpage here, for ways to connect.

While the station doesn’t have any reporters in China right now (it will for the Olympics), it is monitoring broadcasts from networks in Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as from the state-run China Central Television (CCTV). News writer Anne Ng said the station’s editors have been culling information equally from all three sources. It has also been connecting with some of the approximately 10,000 descendents of the Sichuan province living in the Bay Area, who have connected the station via phone with relatives and friends living in the quake zone.

So how has the news coverage been from the state-run Chinese media, given the Chinese government’s history of media censorship?

“It’s a disaster and they need help from the outside so the coverage has been good so far,” Ng said. On Monday, for the first time, KTSF interviewed a reporter from CCTV on its airwaves. “But if we had to rely just on CCTV (earthquake footage) it wouldn’t be enough.”

“Of course they show a much more positive coverage, with the prime minister visiting (the earthquake region) and so on,” said Angelina Wong, an assignment editor at KTSF. CCTV is pre-empting regular entertainment programs to provide hourly updates on the quake.

i-Cable, the Hong Kong network, has been able to get more footage out, Ng said, because their reporters were transmitting stories using video phones as opposed to bouncing stories off of a satellite. “It is very raw, but you can see how difficult it is to rescue people there,” Ng said.